Archive for April, 2010

It’s difficult to stand out as a p**** (self-censored) among soccer players. Congratulations, Kaj Ennigaro. Yet another notch on the goal post as to why the global love for soccer will confuse the shit out of any extraterrestial being who happens to visit the planet.

Remember when some people (republicans) flipped their shit over the voter registration fraud (different from voter fraud) perpetrated by some of ACORN’s lazier employees? That was a big deal. Now the Birkenstock is on the other foot. How do you like it, Libruls?

Orange County authorities are launching an investigation into possible voter registration fraud after a local newspaper reported over a hundred cases of voters being tricked into registering as Republicans by petitioners who asked them to sign petitions for, among other causes, legalizing pot.

Young Republicans '10

Predictable potheads. Man, I just rolled out of bed and the dude with the clipboard told me if I signed the paper, pot would be legal and I’d get a copy of the new Call of Duty…And now I’m a republican? Fuckin’ A, man. Now I have to vote for Ritt Momney? This hella-sucks…Let’s go pull a tube…

In a lengthy investigation published earlier this month, the paper pointed to an $8 “bounty” offered by the California Republican Party for each new registration as a cause for the problems. It identified multiple petitioners who work for vendors “with ties to the California Republican Party.” Back in 2006, a similar scandal led to the convictions of several petitioners.

On the bright side, it’s a heady achievement these people have permanent addresses.

The teabaggers have spent a lot of breath and crayons condemning the current government and labeling them fascists. You know, the horrible tax breaks for 95% of working americans. The awful extension of health care to some of their countrymen. The intrusive and constitutionally mandated Census form. All things fascist as Nazi couples’ line-dancing.

The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (known mainly as SB 1070) requires that police officers determine the immigration status of a person “where reasonable suspicion exists” that the person is in the country illegally. The officer must then verify the suspect’s immigration status with the federal government.

When asked what other factors an officer might use to single out an unlawful resident, [Governor Jan] Brewer replied, “We have to trust our law enforcement.”

…the Constitution’s equal protection clause forbids the government from differentiating between anyone in the United States — including illegal aliens — on the basis of race. The new law, on its face, doesn’t make racial distinctions, but its supporters haven’t articulated any other grounds for suspecting that someone is an unlawful resident. It is, therefore, vulnerable to the argument that it essentially criminalizes walking while Hispanic.

…The uncertainty surrounding these questions brings SB 1070 directly into the cross hairs of what’s called the “void for vagueness” doctrine, a legal principle that requires a certain specificity in criminal statutes. The Arizona law, in failing to provide clear guidelines either to citizens or officers, creates a risk that policemen will, in the words of the Supreme Court, conduct “standardless sweep[s],” bound only by “their personal predilections.”

So there it is – a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment (and probably the EP clause) perfectly teed up for the teed off Tea Party. Prepare for the furor to rain down, right?

We are asking for you to spread the word to see if anyone is available to come down there… to show your support of the bill.

They are meeting by the Arizona Flag on the House Lawn. Bring American Flags and signs if possible… Signs: We support “LEGAL” Immigration, In Mexico, You Must Be Legal… Why not here? – etc…

Wait a minute? You’re supporting unconstitutional and “expanded” government power? I just don’t know what to believe anymore.

This is further evidence of how the “tea party” is not an organic or independent movement. As Newt Gingrich indicated, they are pretty much the “militant wing” of the GOP. After 8 years of dormancy, a period during which the federal government spied illegally on its citizens, lied to them in order to send this country’s children to fight an unneccessary war, and passed a prescription drug program with no way of funding it (all the while doubling the national debt), they suddenly and organically pop their heads out of their bomb shelters on 1-21-09?

One [teabagger], teacher Susan Livermore, disagreed with that characterization. “I wouldn’t use the word ‘militant,’” Livermore said, saying that is simply for lower taxes and “government getting out of my life.”

While I’m sure some small government and libertarian true believers exist within the movement; as a whole, there is very little ideological veracity to the teabagger movement. They are merely doing the bidding of the far right GOP, who always disingenuously returns to the small government meme when out of power. There is nothing independent and organic about it. They are merely out of power and marginalized, screaming like petulant children who only got one scoop of ice cream (topped with Social Security and sprinkled with Medicare).

I like these people exercising their First Amendment rights and Right to Assemble. Any objective observer can see the ridiculous contradictions on an almost daily basis. Teabag on, you loco diamantes.

Sue Lowden, the front-running Republican challenger to Sen. Harry Reid, yesterday doubled down on her idea that health care could be paid for using the barter system.

Last week, when Lowden suggested “that bartering is really good,” it seemed that she may have been talking about haggling prices and just had her vocab mixed up. It happens to everyone.

….on a local news program, Lowden seemed to double down on the idea. Asked whether the statement made her seem disconnected, she shot back that it’s Reid who’s disconnected for not knowing “that this is already happening in our state.”

“Let’s change the system and talk about what the possibilities are. I’m telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say I’ll paint your house,” she said. “[That's] what people would do to get health care with their doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people.”

“I’m not backing down from that system,” she added.

I agree that many doctors are sympathetic people. I’m sure some doctors do barter with certain patients who can offer something desirable in return (auto repair, fresh figs, ad copy…??).

Yet Lowden keeps returning to the well, seemingly trying to make this part of her alternative “plan” to recent health reform. While I don’t want to judge her sincerity or sanity, her pining for the days of her (our) grandparents is sentimentally amusing. “Your Great-Grandma got a whole day off from the factory to give birth in a bathtub, and a week later your days-old Granny was put to work on the 12-hr assembly line day-shift (ironically) plucking chickens until she died of ‘feather lung’ at age 37…but at least she had saved up a couple of hens to pay for that last morphine dose…”

[I'm sure many of the labor-hating, GOP oligarchs similarly pine to return to those days and have spent the last 30 years trying to turn back the clock.]

How practical is Lowden’s proposal? Well, www.lowdenplan.com has a convenient chicken converting calculator perfect for letting you know just how big that next basement has to be. Also, any renters are going to need a kickass landlord.

Gratuitous World has more important eggs to fry. We’ve long been on top of the scourge of pick-up truck accessories known as “Truck Nutz.” Texan Debra Knezek apparently agrees, and helped spawn an entire “Nutz” article in the Dallas News. She wrote:

“Please tell me that there is some sort of law that prohibits this obnoxious and disgusting accessory,” she said.

Well, there was a federal law carrying a mandatory minimum penalty of 6 mos. for the “vehicular display of tacky plastic testicles” until the judicial activists at the 5th District Appellate Court invalidated the law in the landmark Concerned Citizens of Waco v. Composite Scrot Co. decision (2005). In the opinion, the Court cited the obscure “right to bear fake balls” amendment ratified by the states in 1919 to protect popular, yet vulgar vaudevillian, P.J. Fannyloaf.

What does Dallas News’ Katie Fairbank have to say about the issue?

The anatomically correct dangling body parts – sold as “Truck Nutz” online – probably are breaking some communities’ obscenity laws. Even so, don’t expect to see enforcement. After a lot of nervous laughs, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety did a search for me and couldn’t find any examples of tickets anywhere in the state.

In Dallas – where police issued a disorderly conduct citation to Grammy winner Erykah Badu for taking off her clothes in Dealey Plaza – the hanging accessories haven’t raised too much fuss, either.

“There are laws regulating sexually explicit material or displays. So far, no one has been ticketed for these types of things on their truck,” said Senior Cpl. Janice Crowther of the Dallas Police Department. “If we had someone with flat-out pornography, that would definitely be illegal.”

Crowther said she was familiar with the bumper additions. “I see them all the time. I thought they were pig or bull. The average person would not suspect it would be human genitalia,” she said.

Knezek said she finds the dangling plastic body parts both obnoxious and offensive.

“I am by no means a prude and am a country girl from Texas, yet these ‘things’ take it too far,” she said, adding that she wrote her elected officials to complain, but that her efforts didn’t meet with success.

Meanwhile, other states that have debated whether the ornaments are obscene, in poor taste or really funny haven’t gotten too far.

Florida’s Senate approved a $60 fine for the accessories in 2008, but the state’s House wound up not going along with the idea. One legislator complained that he didn’t think the state should be “bumper police.”

Nancy Adams, who has sold them online for years, said that her Web site, Thatsnutz.com, has only gotten a handful of complaints. ”They’ve mainly been from moms, which I guess I can understand,” said Adams, who is a grandmother. “I grew up in the country. I guess you explain it however a parent wants to handle it.”

Thank you, Moms. Some can only hope to one day have a Truck-Nutz free Mothers’ Day. Keep fighting, Debra!

Justice John Paul Stevens is retiring. A great legal mind, and from most accounts, a humble and friendly guy, he will be missed (by some). However, as the young man closes in on 90 years of age, it might be a good time to call it a day. I hope he enjoys retirement.

Stevens turned down an offer to teach at Yale Law School and instead became an antitrust lawyer in Chicago. He joined forces with moderate and liberal good-government Democrats, who were opposed to the corruption of the Daley machine. In 1969, he was appointed to investigate a political scandal on the Illinois Supreme Court, an investigation that made his professional reputation. A citizen activist named Sherman Skolnick accused the chief justice and another Illinois Supreme Court justice of accepting bank stock from a politically connected Chicago lawyer in exchange for deciding a case in his favor. The Illinois Supreme Court set up a special commission to investigate the allegations, and Stevens was appointed general counsel. After a six-week investigation, culminating in Stevens’s dramatic courtroom examination of the accused justices, the commission concluded that both men had, in fact, violated canons of judicial ethics, and both resigned.

Ah, Illinois Politics. Reliable to many a fault.

Stevens was first appointed to the Federal Bench (7th Cir.) by President Nixon in 1970, and then nominated for the SCOTUS by President Ford in 1975. This is an excellent illustration of just how radically right the political + judicial moneychangers have trended over the last few decades, while we remain a center-left country. In fact, for whatever it’s worth, Stevens considers himself a “judicial conservative,” an admirer of Republican Centrist Potter Stewart. Yet he has been labeled, among other things, the “Chief Justice of the Liberal Supreme Court.”

Stevens Record:

Stevens drafts most of his opinions himself. He is fierce in dissent, and has a reputation as a tireless worker.

He has occasionally been criticized for a lack of consistency. Yet instead of haughtily adhering to some unyielding or convenient self-serving dogma, Stevens addresses each case issue on its own, acknowledging the practical effects of the Court’s decisions.

Death Penalty: Case in point, Stevens sided with the majority in Gregg v. Georgia, which overruled Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S.238 (1972) and again allowed the use of the death penalty in the United States. Yet in a practical and (in my view) appropriately moral turn in later cases, Stevens held that the Constitution forbids the use of the death penalty in certain circumstances (juvenile offenders). He opined that “state-sanctioned killing is…becoming more and more anachronistic” and agreed with former Justice White‘s assertion that “the needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes…would be patently excessive” in violation of the Eighth Amendment (quoting from the concurrence of Byron White in Furman).

Affirmative Action: In 1980, Stevens dissented from the court’s decision upholding racial preferences in federal contracting, explosively comparing them with the Nazi laws excluding Jews from citizenship. More recently, however, he has voted enthusiastically to uphold affirmative action in universities and public-school enrollment plans, comparing them to welcome mats rather than no-trespassing signs. To Stevens, however, his views have been consistent. “There’s a tremendous difference in using affirmative action when you get a group to build a highway and affirmative action in the educational context,” he told me. “I think my rhetoric was probably a little strong,” he continued, but the federal law authorizing racial preferences for highway contracts was a “slapdash statute” that was based on pork-barrel politics, benefiting one group of contractors rather than citizens as a whole. In schools and universities, by contrast, “the whole student body profits from having diversity in the classes. So I really don’t think I’ve changed my views about this.”

First Amendment: In Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S.38 (1985), striking down an Alabama statute mandating a minute of silence in public schools “for meditation or silent prayer”, Stevens wrote the Opinion for a majority affirming that the Establishment Clause is binding on the States via the Fourteenth Amendment, and that: “Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom of mind, so also the individual’s freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed of the majority. At one time, it was thought that this right merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism. But when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all.”

Women’s Rights: Abortion is another area in which Stevens has insisted on the duty of the government to act impartially rather than favoring some groups over others for sectarian reasons. He has suggested that restrictions on a woman’s right to choose may be unconstitutional because they reflect religiously motivated views about human life — thus violating the government’s responsibility under the First Amendment to be neutral between religious and secular viewpoints. “I think the less judges have to decide the better, and I frankly look at who should decide this,” he told me. “Obviously, I think basically the woman is the person most affected by it and has tremendously important interests; better to have her decide these questions with her own counselors and guidance than to have judges and legislators deciding something like this.” Amen to that.

Fourth Amendment: Stevens has a generally liberal voting record on the Fourth Amendment, which deals with search and seizure. Stevens authored the majority opinion in Arizona v. Gant, which held that “[p]olice may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the compartment at the time of the search or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest.” On April 30, 2007, Stevens was the lone dissenter in an 8–1 ruling holding that high-speed police chases that result in death or serious injury do not violate the Fourth Amendment (Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S.372(2007)).Stevens maintained that the videotape evidence was not decisive and that a jury should determine if deadly force is justified, not “a group of elderly appellate judges.”

Executive Power: Another of Stevens’s longstanding themes is the need for judicial oversight of broad claims of executive power. Stevens’s repeated insistence that the president isn’t above the law has led him to rule not only against President Bush in cases concerning the prosecution of the war on terror but also against President Clinton in Clinton v. Jones, in which Stevens wrote the majority opinion in 1997 allowing the Paula Jones sexual-harassment suit to proceed while Clinton was in office. I mentioned that many people had ridiculed his prediction that the Clinton v. Jones case “appears to us highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of” the president’s time. Nevertheless, Stevens insisted, it wasn’t fair to blame the court for having precipitated Clinton’s impeachment. “The issue in that case was whether he could have the trial postponed until he left office. But everyone agreed that the deposition had to go forward — even Clinton’s lawyers,” he said. “So the decision had absolutely no impact on the impeachment, but I know I get heat for it.”

During the GWB years, it was sometimes hard to distinguish the President from a monarch, as rapid expansion of executive power was used to rationalize many Bush policies (where were you then, teabaggers?).

In Hamdan, the Supreme Court, with Justice Stevens in the majority, held that Bush lacked the legal authority to create military commissions without approval from Congress, i.e., the Court (and Stevens) found Bush lacked the “legal authority.”

A pragmatic critic of the impractical and self-serving “originalist” (when convenient) doctrine touted by Scalia-Thomas, Stevens “saw it as his role to interpret the Constitution with fidelity to all of American history.” Of course, originalism can be used to justify conservative or liberal decisions. As Stevens said, “Originalism is perfectly sensible. I always try to figure out what the original intent was, but to say that’s the Bible and nothing else counts seems to me quite wrong.”

Some legal scholars view Stevens’s sense of history as a reason for his warm embrace by liberals. “Stevens became the leader of the left on the court,” says Robert Post, a professor at Yale Law School, “because he’s able to say, ‘I remember, and I’m faithful to what has happened in the past, but my fidelity is to all of American history.’ ”

I admire Justice Stevens because he’s one of the Court’s last protectors of individual rights, and a staunch voice against recent trends expanding executive power. While many centrists and liberals were (appropriately) concerned about Justice Alito’s appointment, it has been Chief Justice Roberts who has led the assault on the individual. As Jeffrey Toobin wrote last year,

In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

As a major counter-weight to the radically Conservative leaders of the SC, there’s no doubt Stevens will be missed. President Obama prized judicial experience and intellectual capacity when he nominated Justice Sotomayor to the bench last year. Hopefully, he’ll nominate another qualified justice in the mold of Stevens.

Even as his opinions have made him a model for liberals around the country, Stevens is more interested in demonstrating his intellectual consistency and temperament as a judge’s judge. “You write what you think is correct and important,” he told me matter-of-factly. “I don’t consider myself a mobilizer.”

Justice Stevens began his public service on December 6, 1941 when he enlisted in the Navy and eventually joined its intelligence service. He earned a Bronze Star for his cryptography work which helped break the Japanese codes. A good run. And not a bad time to hang up the robe. Enjoy retirement, Justice Stevens. See you at Wrigley.

Tiger Woods is a dirtbag. Anyone with that much money who actually eats at Perkins, much less diddles one of the waitresses, has a skewed moral compass.

So after 6 months of scandal, Tiger is finally returning to the only place I care to see him – the golf course. In particular, The Masters at Augusta National (Ga.), the scene of some of Tiger’s greatest moments.

Don't sell yourself short. You're a tremendous slouch.

Enter Augusta Chairman Billy Payne, who must’ve thought, “You know, bitching out the hired help is getting a little old. While I have access to all this media, maybe I should dress down Tiger before I fade back into anonymity next Monday. Aunt May and Uncle Winchester would’ve wanted it that way…”

“Finally, we are not unaware of the significance of this week to a very special player, Tiger Woods. A man who in a brief 13 years clearly and emphatically proclaimed and proved his game to be worthy of the likes of Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. As he ascended in our rankings of the world’s great golfers, he became an example to our kids that success is directly attributable to hard work and effort.

“But as he now says himself, he forgot in the process to remember that with fame and fortune comes responsibility, not invisibility. It is not simply the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here; it is the fact that he disappointed all of us, and more importantly, our kids and our grandkids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children.

“Is there a way forward? I hope yes. I think yes. But certainly his future will never again be measured only by his performance against par; but measured by the sincerity of his efforts to change. I hope he now realizes that every kid he passes on the course wants his swing, but would settle for his smile.

“I hope he can come to understand that life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who bring joy to the lives of other people. We at Augusta hope and pray that our great champion will begin his new life here tomorrow in a positive, hopeful and constructive manner, but this time, with a significant difference from the past. This year, it will not be just for him, but for all of us, who believe in second chances.”

Who the Fuck does this guy think he is? I watched a lot of ESPN last night. Every time this smug good ‘ol boy came on the tv, I became more and more furious. Tiger is a goddamn athlete, nothing more. The only person fit to make this speech is his wife. Disappointing kids and grandkids? What kind of idiot encourages his child to model (off-the-course) behavior after an insanely rich + powerful athlete? From Babe Ruth to Michael Jordan, haven’t we learned that lesson?

It’s interesting Payne invokes the name of Arnold Palmer. Arnie is perhaps the most beloved golfer of all-time. He’s also a noted philanderer who had his own “Army” beyond the Sunday galleries. More to the point, you think Tiger is the first PGA player to stray from the path of virtue? Jesus H! This is the tour renowned for heavy drinking and carousing. Just because no one cares where Geoff Ogilvy (or whoever) puts his putter doesn’t mean he always puts it back in the bag.

Hey Billy Payne, how will you “explain to your kids and grandkids” about the racist and sexist practices of Augusta National? Maybe little Sally Mae will soon be disappointed to learn her granddad is a hypocritical hayseed tool who runs a club with one token black member and 0 female members. Are there no skeletons in your closet, stone thrower?

Take your grandstanding, moralizing hayseed ass, plant it on a porch where you belong, grab a bourbon and resume spinning yarns about your time in the Gridiron Secret Society at UGA, partaking in the old elephant walk or whatever kind of weird shit went down.

I hope Tiger wins and celebrates by banging one of your female relations all over Amen-Corner. YOU…YOU’RE NO GENTLEMAN….

And he’s our president? MSNBC scooped this juicy nugget over the weekend. President Obama checked the “black” box on the tyrannically invasive Census form. Then someone wrote a story about it. Apparently, in clear violation of anti-miscegenation laws at the time, Obama’s parents got hitched and had a child.

“Now I’ll be accepted by 2 communities!”

Then the thankless POTUS denies part of his genealogical makeup on his Census form? For shame, and in clear violation of the “tie-goes-to-mother” rule. Be prepared for some wary villagers who lack a historical compass to get a little upset.

In 2000, President Clinton also checked “Black” on his form and included a Polaroid of himself playing saxophone as proof. This picture was disregarded by Census authorities. According to reports, Bill Clinton remains white.

(originally posted 2/10/10) then again (7/9/10) now one more time before retirement. for love. UPDATE: So it’s as hot as fuck out east because, you know, it’s July. Anyway, I’m just checking in because although You Know and I Know daily mid-Atlantic microtrends in weather do not offer any proof or disproof with regard to […]